Nicaragua

Both Nicaragua and Venezuela have now offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has already reject the US request for the rendition of Snowden.

Along with insight on Hambre Cero ('Zero Hunger'), cables released by WikiLeaks provide previously unreported dark sides in inner management of social welfare programs launched by the Ortega government. This article reports the way social welfare programs are dealt with in the midst of budget deficits based on the cables, mainly focusing on one of the major social welfare projects of Ortega government, Programa Amor ('Program of Love') and other social welfare programs for street children in 2007-2010.

What is Programa Amor?

Programa Amor is one of many social welfare programs that President Ortega and his FSLN party presented to the public in 2007. The stated goal of the program was to provide education and other opportunities to 25,000 street children to break away from some of the worst forms of child labor. Programa Amor has been headed by the First Lady Rosiario Murillo and Ministries of Family, Health, Education, and the government.

Cable: Concerns of Ministry of Family insiders on Programa Amor; It forces children to their home which drive them back to the street

09MANAGUA1318 reveals that people inside the Ministry of Family (MiFamilia), which is a focal point of implementation of Programa Amor, confessed their concerns on the program’s general operating style. The program sends children back to their home in the evening after daytime education courses of the shelters, and this poses a serious threat to the children, since most of them are forced to find places at night other than their homes, which they originally ran away from.

Hambre Cero (“Zero Hunger”) has been an ambitious social welfare program that president Ortega’s FSLN(Sandanista National Liberation Front) party declared in 2007. More than 3 years after that, cables released by WikiLeaks reveal hidden mechanisms and progression of the programs throughout 2007-2010.

Hambre Cero ‘veiled in secrecy’ in discriminatory selection of beneficiaries with no independent monitoring systems

Hambre Cero(“Zero Hunger”) is a state-led welfare program to help ‘eradicate poverty until 2012’ by providing Productive Parcels, which is a packet of livestock, goods, and services including various training needed to establish a self-supporting production of food in the poor areas. The government’s goal is to reach 75,000 families. And since the reported number of people living below the poverty line is 2,300,000 individuals in the country, the process of selecting beneficiaries is an important factor that should be impartial and transparent. However, recently released cables detail how the progression of planning the program and defining standards had been opaque since the first step.

El País: "Los más buscados" por EE UU: el sandinismo antidemocrático y corruptor ("Most Wanted" by the U.S.: the Sandinistas undemocratic and corrupting)

"El gubernamental e izquierdista Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), cuya revolución acabó en 1979 con la dictadura de Anastasio Somoza, prometió establecer la justicia social en Nicaragua, pero acabó siendo un movimiento corruptor, autoritario, que avasalló a la oposición y aceptó fondos del narcotráfico, según afirma un informe de la embajada de Estados Unidos en Managua. (The governmental and leftist National Sandinista Liberation Front (FSLN, Spanish acronym), whose revolution in 1979 ended the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza, promised to establish social justice in Nicaragua, but ended up being a spoiler movement, authoritarian, who overpowered the opposition and accepted funds drug trafficking, according to a report from the U.S. Embassy in Managua.)"

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(Image Credit: Dali Rău)

El País: Daniel Ortega, en la lista estadounidense de "los más buscados" (Daniel Ortega, on the U.S. list of "Most Wanted")

"Nicaragua no es una democracia pues los poderes del Estado están controlados por dos personas, el presidente, Daniel Ortega, y el opositor Arnoldo Alemán, expresidente, que no cumplen cárcel porque en el país centroamericano no hay justicia independiente, según un cable de la embajada de Estados Unidos en Managua. (Nicaragua is not a democracy because the branches of government are controlled by two people: the president Daniel Ortega and the opponent Arnoldo Aleman, former president, who are not in prison because the Central American country has no independent judiciary, according to an U.S. embassy cable from Managua.)"

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La Jornada: Falta el aval del Senado, pero ya votó Washington por Marisela Morales (The backing of the Mexican Senate is still lacking, but Washington already voted for Marisela Morales)